Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One

Last summer, my family sent me to Hawaii. I worried that their expectation was for me to swim back to California, but it turned out to be a round-trip flight.  I was going to see some old friends and a few of the sights.  Not only that, but the mild climate and stress-free lifestyle of the Islands would be good for my MS.

When I left, I gate-checked my wheelchair and was assured that it would meet me at the end of the flight (You see this coming, don’t you?).  Arriving in Honolulu, the isle chair took me to an airport wheelchair waiting for me in the loading area. 

I tried to stay somewhat evolved, but insisted that they find my chair.  They did finally bring me another passenger’s wheelchair (who was looking for it in Baggage Claim), but my chair was nowhere to be found. To make a long story short, my chair was on the tarmac in Los Angeles. 

One of the comments that was tossed at me was, “Well, sometimes baggage does get lost.”  Think about that.

I’m not militant, and I don’t like to make a bad name for my misabled brothers and sisters, but suddenly I had become unclaimed baggage.  I was traveling alone and had suddenly had my “legs” removed.  My mouth was still intact, and several people heard it.  The biggest problem was that no matter how much or to whom I complained, I was still sitting in an airport and not enjoying Hawaii.

The best that they could do was to bring my chair to the hotel when it arrived in eight hours and let me use one of the airport chairs in the interim.  I chose the lesser of evils (the chair that was the closest to fitting a human body), loaded into my friend’s car and went forth.

By that evening, my chair had arrived, and normal order in my abnormal world was restored, but I write this to say something else.  Though the world doesn’t always accommodate me, I have learned to live in it regardless.

I don’t blame anyone for my difficulties, and I’m not mad at anyone (except the jerk who forgot to load my chair).  If I am to thrive in my world and my situation, I have to make a conscious decision to do so and to enjoy the journey.  I have more being-thrown-out-of-my-chair stories than I can count, and I often encounter the insensitive and the stupid, but I usually find humor in trips down Memory Lane to revisit them.

This is my mission in life:  I will see the incongruities and absurdities around (and sometimes in) me in a way that makes me a better person with a better (and more humorous) story to tell.